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Plants and Empire in Ovid's Metamorphoses

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Plants and Empire in Ovid's Metamorphoses Duke University Nondum laurus erat: Plants and Empire in Ovid’s Metamorphoses A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of Classical Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Distinction Department of Classical Studies by S. Elizabeth Needham Durham, North Carolina April 2019 Copyright © 2019 by Sarah Elizabeth Needham All rights reserved ii cum in contemplatione naturae nihil possit videri supervacuum —Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 11.4 iii Acknowledgements Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Professor Clare Woods, for her support and guidance, her enthusiasm for my project, and, above all, her patience as I made my way through this year. I could not imagine having a better advisor and mentor than her for this project. I am also grateful to Professor Mary T. Boatwright for her support of me these past four years. I would not be where I am today without her. Lastly, I would like to thank my friends and family for their continuous support and belief in me throughout this process. In particular, I am grateful for Evie Marecki, who was always a willing sounding board, and Jessica Bolin, my most stalwart proofreader. iv Contents Abstract vi Introduction 1 Chapter One. Botanical Imperialism 5 Chapter Two. Planting the Seed 18 Ovid’s New Age 18 Conquering Daphne 23 Conclusions 32 Chapter Three. The Imperial Garden 34 Nymphs Escaping Rape 35 Preserving Youths 38 Punishment 43 Anomalous Transformations 46 Conclusions 50 Chapter Four. The Hasta Romuli 53 Conclusion 66 Bibliography 69 v Abstract Plants held many types of power and meaning in the ancient world. Managing and absorbing knowledge acquired through conquest into the dominant culture, including botanical knowledge, can be considered part of the encyclopedic project of imperialism. Both plants and knowledge about plants were highly valuable as commodities and symbols of conquest, especially during triumphal processions. Within an imperial context, control of plants and control of botanical knowledge translate into control of people and places. In this way, the transformation of people and objects into plants in Ovid’s Metamorphoses acquires meanings of subjugation. These newly transformed plants often function similarly to human captives or natural resources extracted and brought into an empire. Ovid’s entire literary project in the Metamorphoses, to assemble these myths into a single continuous poem, is an imperialistic project that brings these myths under the cultural dominion of the Roman Empire. Through the plant transformations of the Metamorphoses, Ovid subtly nurtures a view of imperialism that invites reflection on the relationship between autonomy and empire. Of these transformations, Daphne and the hasta Romuli are given the most weight as the first and last. Daphne is fully conquered by Apollo in her transformation, adopted by him as his tree, and integrated into Roman culture as a symbol of victory. There are strong imperialistic overtones in this episode—Daphne’s subjugation and absorption by Rome, the laurel’s connection to victory, conquering, and Rome’s prophesied destiny—which reflect the realities of the Roman Empire at the time of Ovid’s writing. He links the hasta Romuli to Vergil’s golden bough, connecting Aeneas, Romulus, and Augustus—possibly in order to demonstrate that the prophecies of the Aeneid and Metamorphoses have reached their fulfillment in Augustus. Ovid appears to have resurrected Vergil’s golden bough in the hasta Romuli, which could be unlocking a new vi prophecy for the future of Rome now that the prophecy given to Aeneas has reached its conclusion. He bookends his poem with these two symbolism-laden transformations—the laurel as a symbol of victory, conquest, and prophecy, and the hasta Romuli as a prophetic link between the past and future of Rome. Through the plant transformations of the Metamorphoses, and these two in particular, Ovid sheds a prophetic light on the end of his poem, thus planting the seed for Augustus’ eventual primacy. vii Introduction Although many people today are far removed from plants and the processes that deliver them to us in recognizable forms, the quality of human life has always been dependent upon their existence. Plants are the backdrop of the world and their presence is often negligible, but we would certainly notice their absence. They are our food, medicine, fuel, clothing, and so much more; without plants, our survival would be impossible. Plants have also played important symbolic roles throughout human history, carrying much significance in our societies. Red poppies have symbolized remembrance for fallen soldiers since the time of World War I, popularized in the famous rondeau “In Flanders Fields.”1 Plum, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum make up the “Four Gentlemen” (Chinese: ; pinyin: Sì Jūnzǐ) of Confucianism in Chinese brush painting, together symbolizing the four seasons.2 In ancient Rome, the laurel was a symbol of victory, used to crown champions, emperors, and gods.3 Although meanings and uses of plants may differ over time and across lands, their importance in the human consciousness persists. In recent years, the field of Classics has seen a growing interest in the ancients’ relationship to the natural world, and in particular their interactions with plants. Wilhelmina F. Jashemski stands out for her pioneering work on ancient gardens, and many advances have been made in archaeobotany.4 A number of studies exist now on topics such as environmental degradation in the ancient world or the domestication of various cereals and other crops. Gavin 1 John McCrae, In Flanders Fields, and Other Poems (New York; London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons), 3. 2 Rosanna Masiola, Roses and Peonies: Flower Poetics in Western and Eastern Translation (Universitas Studiorum, 2014), 54–55. 3 Marcel de Cleene, Compendium of Symbolic and Ritual Plants in Europe, Compendium van Rituele Planten in Europa. English (Ghent: Man & Culture, 2002), 128–29. 4 For more on archaeobotany and garden archeology in Classics, see Jashemski’s first book, The Gardens of Pompeii: Herculaneum and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Caratzas Bros., 1993), and the more recent Gardens of the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 1 Hardy and Laurence Totelin’s Ancient Botany provides a good starting point for any inquiry involving plants in the ancient world, answering the biggest questions—who was writing about plants in the ancient world, how, and why?—and pointing out the many areas that still require more attention, including the lack of works investigating the botanical side of literature. As for cultural analyses of plants, some interesting work has been done connecting plants with imperialism, particularly with respect to Pliny the Elder’s Natural History or garden spaces, but this angle is most often nothing more than one small part of a larger work, receiving little attention. As of yet, there is no definitive study on the topic of botanical imperialism in the ancient world, but the beginnings of one are there, scattered across the field of Classics with respect to subject matter, location, and time period. My project is to combine the literary and the botanical in an analysis of Ovid’s Metamorphoses through the plant transformations of the poem. Scholarship on the Metamorphoses has historically focused on areas such as genre classification, narrative technique, or the theme of love, leaving aside, for the most part, botanical inquiry and the purposeful inclusion of plants into the main narrative of the poem. The transformations of people and objects into plants are treated with regard to these more traditional areas of study rather than to their significance as plants, and the presence of plants throughout the poem remains as mere background material. But there is something to be said about the power of plants as political pieces, as items of cultural and economic importance in the ancient world. The other aspect on which most people focus when scrutinizing Ovid’s writings is his relationship with Augustus. It is impossible to separate Ovid from the reign of Augustus—the emperor is a constant presence in Ovid’s works, intentionally or not—or to separate him from the effects of Augustan-era imperialism. Depictions of nature’s bounty became a recurrent theme of 2 Augustan iconography, representative of the abundance brought about by the emperor’s pax Romana. The Metamorphoses, published in 8 CE about twenty years after the dedication of the Ara Pacis (one of the more famous examples of such iconography), cannot be separated from this theme or from the effects of Augustan imperialism as a whole. But as Thomas Habinek puts it (emphasis added): Because Ovid’s position as both subject and object of the imperial gaze in many ways resembles our own, exploration of his politics invites uncomfortable self- scrutiny on the part of the critic – a consideration that may explain why most studies of Ovidian politics limit themselves to examining the degree to which the poet distances himself from the princeps rather than considering the extent to which his writing is implicated in Roman imperialism.5 I do not wish to focus on where exactly Ovid stood on the issue of Augustus, but instead look at Ovid’s interactions with imperialism as a subject of Augustan Rome. I am more interested in the ways in which the emperor’s rule pervades the Metamorphoses, specifically through the concept of botanical imperialism. A close reading of the Metamorphoses through its plants reveals a new side of the poem and gives us valuable information about the ancients’ relationship with the natural world within the context of empire. There are roughly twenty-three plant transformations in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, all of differing length and prominence.6 The tales told are those of Daphne, Syrinx, the Heliades, Narcissus, the mulberry tree, Leucothoë, Clytië, Crocus and Smilax, Baucis and Philemon, Lotis, Dryope, Attis, Cyparissus, Hyacinthus, Mentha, Adonis, Myrrha, the Maenads, Ajax, the Apulian shepherd, and the hasta Romuli.
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